The National Spelling Bee, sponsored by Scripps, is really inspiring. It is so gratifying to see so many hard-working young people striving for excellence. There is no affirmative action here. You either spell the word correctly, or you don’t. Standards are not lowered to accommodate anyone.

Another thing is that the young people are so friendly and nice to one another and to the parents and adults.

Christian got his two on-stage words correct — zucchini and mynheer. But the first-round written test, conducted on a computer, tripped him up on several very difficult words (see words below).

By the way, mynheer is defined as a male Netherlander —used as a title equivalent to Mr. This is a tough word.

My son Christian did not make it into the finals of the National Spelling Bee, to be broadcast tonight -- Thursday night -- on ESPN at 8:00 pm Eastern time. But we are very proud of him. He was one of 278 who made it to the National Spelling Bee, out of nine million spelling bee participants.

Thanks to all of you who were following his progress and cheering for him.

I have included photos of my son Christian on the big TV screen inside the Maryland ballroom at the Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor. Participants got special T-shirts calling each of them a “Spellebrity” — a celebrity in the spelling world.

We met many of them, some of them from foreign countries. We met one young lady from China by the name of Katharine Wang. Only 10 years old and in the fifth grade, she was sponsored by the Community Center Shanghai in Shanghai, China. Say what you will about the brutal Chinese communist system -- the communists are competing on the world stage. According to her bio, Chinese is Katharine’s first language, but she also speaks German and is learning French. I can testify she speaks English very well. She was a very pleasant young lady. She wants to be a doctor.

Several of the great spellers have been Indian-American. National Public Radio points out: “Indian-Americans have won the past four contests, and 9 of the past 13 €” even though they make up less than 1 percent of the population.” Their “secrets” include strong families and a desire for learning. Read the rest of the NPR story to learn more about their secrets of success.

Students moving to the semi-finals had to get a very high total score. Here are the round one words, some of them very difficult. These words winnowed the field down considerably. Remember the students had to correctly spell them after hearing them pronounced:

This is an online snapshot of a newsletter created by the owner of asinews (America's Survival Inc., www.usasurvival.org, 20736 Owings, United States) and sent via GetResponse on 2012-05-31. Report abuse